1. Field of Technology
The present invention relates to a method of making a judgment on whether a shot image is a backlit image and an image processing device having a module for the judgment.
2. Description of the Related Art
Shooting an image of a foreground object such as a person under a backlight condition generally results in an image having a background of higher luminance and the object or the person of lower luminance. In such a case, electronic flash can be forced out to increase the luminance of the object so that details of the person such as expressions can be shot with clarity. However, not every photographer always uses electronic flash under such a backlight condition.
In case where an image of a object is shot by a digital still camera (DSC), the generated image data can be subjected to image processing with relative ease. A variety of techniques has been proposed and is in practical use for such image processing. Such image processing techniques include execution of various image processing such as contrast correction, brightness correction, and saturation correction (totally referred to as an automatic image quality adjustment) on the image data, based on a given correction condition selected by a user i.e. contrast correction, brightness correction, or saturation correction, or alternatively based on the result of analysis on the image data.
In the conventional image processing techniques, however, the analysis of image data characteristic sometimes results in an inappropriate judgment on whether the shot image is an image of a person under a backlight condition. In such a case, the user may be required to judge the imaging condition of the image data. In other words, the automatic image processing by a personal computer sometimes results in an unsuccessful judgment on whether the image data is image data of a backlit image of a person. In such a case, the image data of a backlit image of a person may possibly be subjected to inappropriate automatic image processing.